By MICHAEL SOMMERS

June 7, 2014

The shipwreck that opens Shakespeare’s “Tempest” is often staged with billowing sails, splintering masts and despairing sailors lurching across heaving decks amid blasts of rain and wind. Yet that is not the way the play begins in the current production by the Shakespeare Theater of New Jersey in Madison.

Bonnie J. Monte, the director, virtually eliminates this initial scene. Instead, Prospero, the sorcerer who is the story’s central figure, appears alone onstage as he conjures up the storm with his magical staff and a grim smile. A rising cacophony of anguished voices and tumultuous noises wells up around him to depict the chaos.

Such a radical beginning immediately puts the audience on notice that Ms. Monte will be less concerned with producing flashy stagecraft and more intent upon fleshing out the emotions that dwell within Prospero’s heart.

Here is a deposed duke who has been marooned for a dozen years on an enchanted island with Miranda, his young daughter. Now Prospero’s supernatural powers have brought to this same place his enemies, who include Antonio, the treacherous brother who usurped his position, and Alonso, the king of Naples, who aided in the takeover.

But instead of taking revenge, Prospero is revealed to have forgiveness in mind, although he puts his former adversaries through some grievous times before the story resolves in a harmonious ending. “The Tempest” is a drama about transformation. The presumed dead are restored to life, wicked individuals change for the better (most of them, anyway) and in the end, magic willingly gives over to the natural order of things.

Ms. Monte’s calmer interpretation of “The Tempest” does not play down the play’s various wonders so much as render them through subtle yet creative means. The complex sound design created by Karin Graybash employs echoes, eerie reverberations and disembodied voices to evoke enchanted moments while conveying the dulcet sound of the “thousand twangling instruments” that invisibly hum across the island. Tony Galaska’s fine lighting design suffuses the cloud-covered backdrop of Brian Clinnin’s rocky promontory of a set with dappled, rich colors that enhance the drama’s many mood swings.

Well-spoken performances allow the audience to savor the beauty of Shakespeare’s language. A tall, magisterial figure, Sherman Howard presents an imposing Prospero whose mellifluous voice lends kindly authority to his words. With smudges on her face and flowers in her hair, Lindsey Kyler is a naturally ingenuous Miranda, who is ardently partnered by Jackson Moran’s Ferdinand. The affection shared by Mr. Howard and Ms. Kyler in their roles as father and daughter gives their scenes an extra glow.

Garbed by Murell Horton, the costume designer, in yellow tatters that suggest seaweed, Erin Partin gives a swift, sinuous portrayal of the “tricksy” sprite Ariel that recalls a Shakespearean variation on Tinker Bell. A far more earthbound creature is Jon Barker’s anxious depiction of Caliban, the cringing, semi-monstrous slave who resents Prospero’s authority and who consorts with the drunken Neapolitan rowdies played for considerable laughs by Jeffrey M. Bender and Patrick Toon.

As Alonso, a brooding Andrew Criss is obviously distracted by grief when he assumes that Ferdinand, his son, has drowned; his wonder when Ferdinand is finally revealed as alive is evident, as is his remorse over the wrongs he once did Prospero. In malignant contrast, V Craig Heidenreich, whose deep-voiced Antonio sibilantly hisses contempt for everyone around him, remains sullen and unrepentant until he stalks out of the story.

Now in her 24th season as the company’s artistic director, Ms. Monte smoothly stages the play’s frequent transitions, while her boldly conceived reduction of the drama’s external effects makes this rendition of “The Tempest” an especially intimate and thoughtful production.